


Edward Cullen Auditions For America's Got Talent

by Kami



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kami/pseuds/Kami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Think of your family!" says Bella. But Edward has already been seduced away by the bright lights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edward Cullen Auditions For America's Got Talent

            “ _No_ , Edward,” said Bella. “You cannot think of doing this. Think of your family!” 

            “I _am_ thinking of my family,” said Edward. “Of course it will be difficult for some months or even years. But we have those to spare, and then we shall be able to move about far more freely than we do now.”

            “Think of _an eternity of embarrassment_!” Bella looked around for support and her eyes lighted upon her daughter. “Nessie! Tell your father he is making a mistake.”

            “Actually, I think Father is right.” Renesmee tore her gaze reluctantly and only briefly away from the inexplicably exposed chest of her love puppy, Jacob Black. Bella would be _delighted_ once the girl got past the novelty of sex, although it was perhaps unfair of her to think so when _she_ hadn’t managed the same yet. Edward’s enthusiasm for things that Jacob was possibly doing to his daughter had certainly waned, though. “I’ve acquired some past episodes of this show. The contestants do the most _remarkable_ things and - that’s the thing - _nobody_ remarks. They don’t win the level of creative freedom that genuine celebrities do, but once you set up your family’s reputation right, you’re set up for life. Unless you appear to be involving children in your peculiarities, which isn’t a problem for any of us.”

            “You _see_ ,” said Edward.

            Bella sighed. None of those books had said anything about pieces of forever like _this_. “You’re going to do this whether I like it or not, aren’t you?”

            “Of course he is,” Nessie interjected. “C’mon, you’ve told me lots of stories about when you were dating.” She grimaced briefly as if remembering certain stories Bella certainly _hadn’t_ told her that were a little awkward in present company. “When has Father _ever_ done what you’d like him to?”

            Jacob snorted. Bella suspected that little hand planted on his chest was transmitting the sort of jokes at her expense that she could be happy to not be included in.

            “This is why children aren’t supposed to grow up so quickly,” said Edward, fondly. “We really need all the time we can get to cope with how _clever_ they become.”

            They would have _all_ needed help if Renesmee had had any more time to wrap herself around Edward’s little finger. “And what about my _mother_?” she pointed out. “We’ve gone to so much trouble to keep... to keep _this_ from her. And now she sees it on TV?”

            “Oh, everyone looks different on television,” said Nessie. “If anything, it’ll give you more reasons to be too busy to visit her.”

            “I’m with you all the way, Mr. C.,” Jacob added.

            Edward narrowed his eyes at Jacob’s hands, which Bella had to concede were situated far too low on the hips of a girl who had been in her belly so recently. “Nessie has not been an adult long enough for me to be cool with you calling me that again.”

            “Oh,” said Jacob. “Fair call.”

 

*

 

            The audition halls had new-looking skylights in them. In retrospect, Bella realised that should have been her first clue.

            The four of them lined up behind another family who were popping mouthfuls of bubblegum to recreate Muse songs, and in front of a man with a box of matches in his hand and whose jeans, Bella could not help noticing whenever she turned, were well-singed around the crotch area. She pointedly kept facing forward, until the gum-popping family went into a shifty-eyed huddle as if they thought she might be memorising their harmonies.

            “What is your talent going to be, anyway?” she asked Edward. He was fidgeting beside her so much he didn’t seem to have realised they were surrounded by potential appetisers, a lot of them young and sweet-blooded. Bella was pretty sure she would never get used to the constant buffet of vampire/human socialisation.

            “You’ll see,” said Edward. “But only if I get through to the television judges. I... it’ll put me off if you’re there cheering me on right from the start.”

            Bella was going to be offended, but she realised Edward was right. The way they couldn’t keep their hands off one another, her presence while he was singing or telling jokes or playing piano for the first time in front of an audience could only end badly.

            And Edward unquestionably aced the preliminary audition, so her fears that she would never see whatever it was he was talented at were all for nothing.

            “They seemed... dazed,” he reported when they rushed him upon his exiting the audition room.

            Bella pretended she didn’t notice the bubblegum family, who had left the audition room a lot less popping than they’d walked in, still glaring in her direction. It wasn’t _her_ fault they’d picked music most people just weren’t capable of appreciating. “You must have overwhelmed them, considering how good you are at everything you put your hand to,” she said.

            “Geez, too much information, Mrs. C.,” quipped Jacob, thankfully holding nothing more interesting than Renesmee’s hand at that moment.

            “Edward was right,” said Bella. “It is _far_ too soon.”

 

*

 

            The studio audience, cluttered with gabbling children and sweetly delusional fangirls, was giving Bella the vampiric equivalent of an ice cream headache. Renesmee and Jacob were quietly grumbling at one another, so it wasn’t doing them any favours either. Bella barely stopped herself from starting a killing rampage while the Crotch-Burning Wonder did his thing (how had someone decided _that_ should make the recorded portion of the show?) but then it was Edward stepping onto the stage.

            “Look,” said Nessie, though she could _tell_ she didn’t need to. Edward was an unmissable vision of sex in dark, well-fitting pants that drew attention to the pale perfection of his skin where it flowed into his white shirt - not that Nessie or probably Jacob would be thinking of him in _that_ way. He took his place on the stage just outside of the circle of natural light cast by the skylight above.

            Bella was once again overcome by the misgivings that she had thrust away in the wake of how divine Edward would look on television. What happened if that circle moved just a little bit? There would be no hiding that there was an additional talent hanging around Edward, besides which the hosts had already found them despite their best efforts to hide in the audience, so it was too late to pretend they didn’t know him, nothing to see here. Renesmee had attracted enough attention by grabbing the cuter host’s hand in a thoughtless effort to make the interview proceed more quickly, and they’d both probably sounded far too serious when convincing Jacob there was no need to bite the hapless fellow’s head off. In a crowd less populated by crazies, they would have already been uncovered.

            “Name?” said the judge Bella thought she remembered seeing judging that Susan Boyle woman - poor creature she was. How could anyone who had gotten to such an age without finding a vampire to turn them bear to _live_?

            “Edward Cullen.”

            “And what will you be doing for us today?”

            “It’s hard to describe, actually,” said Edward. “But once you see it, you’ll understand.”

            He put a foot into the circle of light, fiddling as he did so with the top button of his shirt.

            “ _No! Edward_!”

            Jacob’s hand on Bella’s arm barely restrained her. He’d gone _mad_ , surely, he’d hunted some bad elk and that plus the pressures of being a teenage father had cracked him.

            “We don’t do anyone any favours rushing into things,” Jacob whispered. “Watch.”

            He turned away to whisper something probably similar to Renesmee. Bella waited - they could get out quickly enough if they needed to, and there was evidence enough on film that they’d known nothing of Edward’s plans to save them so long as they weren’t in the area when the Volturi - but they couldn’t do anything to him, not with _cameras_ \- but she couldn’t just _leave Edward_ but she couldn’t lead her daughter into danger either... Hadn’t he learned _anything_ about her feelings on public sparkling?

            And so the conclusion was she and Nessie and Jacob just sat more or less paralysed in their seats while Edward shrugged his shirt free and moved into the light, first glittering at the edges where his body intersected with the sun’s cursed glare, then exploding in the silhouette of his glorious, beautiful doom.

            The audience cried out as one, turning aside from the power of Edward’s skin. Bella watched it all. She would not turn away... but they were looking back now, murmuring, and here and there sounded tentative applause. Nessie picked her face up off Jacob’s shoulder.

            Bella realised they had all miscalculated in the heat of the moment. Amazing as she thought the sight of a vampire in full light was, still recalling that moment she had seen Edward that way for the first time, in _this_ room it wasn’t all that frightening. It _did_ spur the entire room to eventual applause, once they were as used to the divine glitter as any mere mortal could ever be.

            “That was... remarkable,” said the female judge, some other unfortunately old woman, as the clapping subsided. Wait, the clapping _subsided_? Where were the whoops, the swooning, the fucking _stage rushes_?

            “Thank you,” said Edward, although his face was mirroring Bella’s thoughts. She _knew_ him.

            “The problem is,” the old bitch continued, “we’ve... well, I don’t really know where you would go from here for a start. And then, we’ve seen the same thing a number of times already during the auditions, and your performance was far from the most spectacular.”

            Edward’s jaw dropped. Bella was fairly sure they were wearing matching faces again. She was going to hunt down _every fucking vampire_ on the continent and rip them apart. Once she was done with...

            Jacob touching her shoulder again made her aware that her hands were going to rip themselves apart if she kept them clenched the way they were.

            “Nessie says it would be kind of unfair to tear her head off,” he reported. “After all, you’re guaranteed to think the best of the person you’re... er, intimate with.” He grimaced. “You know, he _is_ right. I think we all need a _really_ long break from one another’s personal lives.”

            “How about we start once we get home?” Bella suggested. She met Edward’s bewildered eyes and decided she was going to drag him into the darkest corner she could find and they were _not_ coming out until she erased those horrifying pronouncements of ambivalence from her memory.


End file.
